How I Picked the Best Stories for My Harvard LL.M. Personal Statement: Proven Method Explained
Introduction
I've shared my process writing the Harvard LL.M. personal statement in a three-part post series, starting here.
This post series is an illustration of my original 5-step methodology for writing compelling LL.M. personal statements. The core of this methodology is identifying and focusing on formative life experiences to craft a compelling LL.M. application. In this post, I talk more about my decision-making process behind the LL.M. personal statement that brought me admission to Harvard and how I ended up using some stories and not the others.
I'll also discuss the sources, besides my immediate professional and personal background, that influenced my writing, such as the use of quotes and metaphors. You can read more on how to navigate choosing experiences and stories for your LL.M. essays separately.
Throughout the post, I'll be making references to the LL.M. personal statement Part B - you can access the full text here.
Harvard LL.M. Personal Statement: The use of quotes
I like using quotes. It's something I do a lot in my writing, both academic and personal. I use quotes to support the statements I make.
For instance, I started my Harvard LL.M. personal statement Part B with a quote by Professor Heineman from the Harvard Center on the Legal Profession, which read as follows:
‘A way to live a such life of values is to provide leadership, not advice’.
I used it not only because it reflected the way I saw my role as a lawyer but, more importantly, because it introduced the main argument of my LL.M. personal statement. The main argument was that all too often, lawyers were acting as mere advisors to decision-makers rather than decision-makers themselves, and I had a plan to change that in my own life by using my Harvard LL.M. degree. Hence, my application to Harvard.
I also used a quote from Felix Frankfurter, a former U.S. Supreme Court judge, to support this message:
‘Law is what the lawyers are. And the law and lawyers are what the law schools make them’ (Letter to Mr. Rosenwald – May 13, 1927).
This second quote highlighted the origin of my goal to transition to academia and the rationale behind it.
In hindsight, I think the second quote was unnecessary, and I could have done without it. My rule of thumb for LL.M. personal statements is that one quote per essay is enough. Otherwise it becomes too crowded.
I see a lot of people use quotes differently. Often, it's thrown as an epigraph to the LL.M. personal statement without further effort to connect it to the core message. Don't do that.
If you decide to use a quote, be careful. It has to be integrated into your essay. Use it as a shorthand for your core message, to reinforce your own thoughts. Otherwise it looks like you are hiding behind someone else's words and don't have anything of your own to say.
Harvard LL.M. Personal Statement: Reference to transactional analysis and the Pollyanna metaphor
At the time of writing the LL.M. applications, I was doing a book club. One of the books we read there was Eric Berne’s Games People Play, which is part of a field in psychology called transactional analysis. In the book club, we talked a lot about the scripts and scenarios that people internalize, including due to trauma.
We also discussed the fairy tales and children’s books that influenced us and possibly gave an unconscious script to follow later in life. When I analyzed my influences, I saw that one of mine was Pollyanna.
I brought it up during a book club meeting, and our moderator suggested that maybe, when I was little, the Pollyanna script was necessary for my survival. But as an adult I didn’t have to follow it anymore.
Her words stayed with me. I found them liberating and started thinking of how I could devise my own scripts and, more importantly, identify the ways in which I have already done that and course correct. That's how I came up with the development arc I discuss in my Harvard LL.M. personal statement, from playing the glad game to obtaining agency in this world and realizing how it has played out in my life both in and outside of law. I decided to make it the main theme of the essay.
On a side note, I asked an American to give feedback on my LL.M. personal statement, and he suggested removing the reference to Pollyanna. He said it's such a common reference it'd be a cliché. I felt really offended by that suggestion. In my view that it’d be a cliché if I were an American. But I’m not. I have a completely different cultural background, and I didn't grow up with American references. I learned them as a sign of appreciation of another culture, and using the Pollyanna reference helped me describe one of the most formative experiences in my life through a metaphor that an American reader could understand and relate to. I left it in, and it worked out.
Harvard LL.M. Personal Statement: the theme of Leadership
The whole reason I started thinking about the relationship between the law and leadership at all was that references to leadership in the examples of the U.S.-style personal statements I read were ubiquitous. On this basis, I concluded that if I were applying to the U.S., it was essential to address my leadership potential.
I can honestly say I was terrified and felt stuck. I spent most of my life struggling for resources and keeping myself afloat, and I simply could not understand why I had to be a leader, and most importantly – how.
I had zero positive examples of leadership growing up. I was also under heavy, heavy weight of the cultural narrative that you should keep yourself small and focus on doing good small things that you can attend to. This narrative is really widespread in the Russian culture. The reason is that for centuries, people were systemically severely punished for standing out. Since leadership is, by definition, about standing out, people who tried to be leaders in the Western sense of the word simply did not survive. They were forced out or eliminated. So the association with leadership I internalized growing up was that being a leader either meant being corrupt or was a survival risk and never helped anyone anyway.
To be able to write an LL.M. personal statement that not only spoke to the American mindset of leadership but also felt authentic to me, I had to reinstall and restructure a huge part of my mental operating system.
One of the ways I did that was to look through various speeches, especially commencement speeches and speeches by deans of American law schools. I paid attention to what resonated with me, made notes, and kept a swipe file of my favorite quotes. That’s how Prof. Heineman came up and his 2006 speech at Yale (here is an adapted version).
I hindsight, I took it too seriously. I don't think you absolutely have to address the leadership component when applying to the U.S. law schools. However, if you do find a way to speak to it - while focusing on your background - it can strengthen your LL.M. application.
If you are struggling with the theme of leadership, here is a definition that helped me a lot:
Leadership is about 'occasions when you have directed the outcome of a project or part of a project or have been responsible for coordinating or motivating others.
It's from a book by A.V. Gordon, MBA Admissions Strategy, and it really changed the way I thought about leadership and my ability to become a leader. I used to think leadership had to be about grandiose things, or it didn't count, and this definition made leadership so much more accessible.
Harvard LL.M. Personal Statement: Experiences I didn't use
One of the most damaging things you can do for your LL.M. personal statement is to include everything that happened in your life. Ever. It may sound impossible but I've seen people try.
Discussing your entire life not going to get you admitted to a prestigious LL.M. program. It'll dilute your message and weaken your essay. It’ll also show the admissions committee that you are incapable of choosing what's important and what's not.
Choosing to leave some of the stories out of your personal statement does not mean these stories are not valuable. It means they are not driving your argument forward.
The good news is, after all the brainstorming you’ve done (if you used the technique I suggest) you'll have plenty of material to use. You’ll probably have to write more cover letters and scholarship applications for all the various things you’ll want to do in your life – and now you'll have the material to do so.
I's one of the reasons I insist on doing thorough brainstorming and ideation for your essays. Nothing is ever wasted.
As I talk about the stories I didn’t use in my Harvard LL.M. personal statement Part B, I highlight the reasons for not including them and point out how I used them in my later applications.
1. designing the national financial markets law reform
As a research fellow at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, I was involved in advising the Russian Central Bank on the reform of pledge and the transfer of title regimes.
I initially included this experience in my Harvard essay because it fit with the overall theme of transition from an advisory role to a decision-making one.
However, it made the essay look cluttered. It also split the focus into two parts: becoming a decision-maker in a law-making role and another in a teaching role. For a 750-word essay, it was just too much, and I decided to exclude it.
I did feature it in my CV and the application form. This is how it looks in my CV:
Higher School of Economics – National Research University, Moscow, Russia
Junior ResearchFellow at the Skolkovo Institute for Law and Development, April 2015 – February 2016
- Conducted research on the central counterparty and marginal requirements for non-centrally cleared derivatives in Germany to develop recommendations for the Russian financial markets law; in collaboration with a team of researchers produced a law reform proposal later implemented by the Russian Central Bank.
2. winning five all-Russian olympiads
I participated in five national olympiads in law, three of them in high school and two at as a law student. However, when talking about them in my Harvard LL.M. personal statement Part b, I omitted most details. I only discussed mentioned the high school olympiads because they showed the origin of my beliefs about life and law and my reasons for becoming a lawyer in the first place. Simultaneously, since it happened 7 years prior to my LL.M. applications, I had to keep it short to move the story forward.
This is how it looked in the final version:
For years, the glad game and Pollyanna’s irrepressible optimism were my philosophy of life, and changing the attitude toward a problem was primary solution. This continued until the high-school: I entered All-Russian competition in law. As I prepared, I learnt: adjustment was not the only option. I may try changing the situation first. Law offers tools designed for this. Understood this way, law was for me about taking actions and making decisions, while leadership was an inherent part of the legal profession. That’s what appealed to me, and I chose law school. As I went through law school, this perception of law remained undistorted.
3. doing the Philip C. Jessup competition
I talked so much about the transformative effect of moot courts on my life that not using this experience in my LL.M. personal statement may seem surprising. However, I had to be very strategic about which experiences to include. To translate the evolution of my thinking, I needed to focus on the experience that illustrated my view of leadership in law the most, and it was coaching a team for Concours Charles-Rousseau rather than doing Jessup.
So I ended up not using the story of participating in the Jessup competition. However, digging it up during the ideation process and reflecting on it inspired the way I framed my reasoning for applying to Harvard.
The unofficial Jessup motto is:
In the future, world leaders will look upon each other differently, because they met here first, as friends.
It may be a sign of just how idealistic I am, but this motto really spoke to me. I wanted to translate it in my essay. So in the final version it became:
Harvard is the place where the Jessup competition was born. Like Jessup, Harvard connects people – outstanding individuals and future leaders – with the ultimate goal of giving them opportunities for change. Having first met at Harvard as friends, in the future they will look at each other differently; they will help each other to be different.
4. participating in Concours Charles-Rousseau
I didn't use the experience of participating in Concours Charles-Rousseau for the same reasons I didn't use Jessup. It was a tough decision as initially, I felt like I had to start with Concours Rousseau to explain why I later became a coach. But as I edited the essay, I realized I didn't need all the background. I could just talk about coaching.
Here is how it looked in the final version of my Harvard LL.M. personal statement:
I started asking myself: Where does this perception of lawyers/law start? Can I change it? At the time, I was coaching a team for the Concours Charles-Rousseau. I guided the work of my students, as they studied writings of prominent scholars and crafted their memorials. My goal was not only to help them master lawyering skills, but also learn about fundamental values of the law, professional integrity and teamwork, commitment and passion. I watched them becoming better persons and thus better lawyers. I came to understand F. Frankfurter’s words: “Law is what the lawyers are. And the law and lawyers are what the law schools make them” (Letter to Mr. Rosenwald – May 13, 1927).
It also provided a segue for the experience I discussed next: teaching law at the Lomonosov Moscow State University.
As for the participation in Concours Charles-Rousseau, I did use it in my applications for arbitration internships, as well as MIDS Geneva LL.M. application. This helped me explain how I got interested in international arbitration, and I further strengthened it by reference to Jessup.
Here is how it looked:
My interest in joining the [firm's name or program's name] is determined by the following reasons. First, it is the focus of the firm’s arbitration group on the projects concerning the issues of international investment and public law. As a third-year student, I became involved in Concours Charles-Rousseau, a French-speaking moot-court competition. The moot problem contemplated a dispute between a state and an investor, which was to be resolved by the ICSID tribunal. Accordingly, my task as a team member was to develop the arguments on the alleged violations of the fair and equitable treatment standard and then plead the case on the respondent's. Having once immersed into the world of investor-State dispute resolution, I could not let it go: it became my passion. In fact, I have never felt so dedicated and committed before; as a consequence, I was working more efficiently than ever. During my fourth year, I took part in the Philip C. Jessup competition where I dealt with the issues of sovereign debt and climate change. At this point I realized that dispute resolution is what I would like to do as a legal professional.
A note on the use of moot court experiences in LL.M. applications: I think it works best if you are a recent law school graduate. If you've been working for some time and/or are a seasoned professional, I'd suggest opting for other experiences to avoid looking immature or too nostalgic about the student years.
5. establishing a pro bono practice at Noerr
While working for a law firm, I founded the firm's pro bono practice. This experience could also be an illustration of how a lawyer can take a leadership stance but again for a 750-word essay I thought it'd divert the attention I needed to clarify my plans for academic work.
I did use this experience a year later when applying for a public interest position with an NGO.
Unfortunately, from my older colleagues I found that using pro bono examples can be considered a cliché and an inauthentic move. Just be aware of it and make sure you have experiences in your life that support your argument about why doing pro bono work was/is important to you.
6. working on regulatory matters at Noerr
I worked on project concerning regulatory matters where I really had to take charge of the interpretation of the law to achieve the outcome that was not harmful to the public. It was sort of the Erin Brockovich situation.
Since my essay focused on experiences of realizing the power of effecting change through teaching, I didn’t use examples from my life as a practicing attorney.
In a hindsight, I think if I planned to continue working as an attorney afterwards, it could be an excellent example of taking a leadership approach while remaining in a role that’s essentially advisory.
7. doing a Ph.D. at the Lomonosov Moscow State University
Although being the middle of my Ph.D. studies at the time of my Harvard LL.M. applications, I didn’t talk about this experience in my essays. Technically, it’d be supportive of my academic endeavors and therefore fit with the overall theme of my essay. Academia comes with a package of research and teaching, and doing a Ph.D. would show sufficient commitment on my side to pursue the academic path.
However, it’d significantly clutter my essay. I already had in on my CV and the application form, and one of my recommenders, my Ph.D. supervisor, talked about it extensively in his letter. I decided it sufficiently supported my application.
8. attending the Hague Academy and Paris Arbitration Academy
I've attended the Hague Academy of International Law and the Paris Academy, both on scholarships. Both were very important experiences for me that influenced me as a lawyer, but I haven't talked about them in my Harvard personal statement, reasoning being the same as above: I wanted to avoid cluttering my essay and losing the reader's attention.
As with other experiences, I featured both on my CV and the application form. Their additional value was that a professor of the Queen Mary University of London who taught there gave me recommendations for my LL.M. applications.
If I’d further intended to build a career in international arbitration, I'd have definitely used these experiences to highlight my prior interest and commitment.
Final Thoughts
You can see that I didn't use most of the experiences I analyzed during brainstorming as potential candidates for my Harvard LL.M. personal statement. This is absolutely normal. You use only a percentage of what you find. however, to make informed choices and create a strong, successful personal statement, you need to have a wealth of ideas and stories to choose from.
If you'd like to learn more, I share more of my process writing the Harvard LL.M. personal statement Part B in a three-part post series starting here. For the essay on a legal issue please see Harvard LL.M. personal statement Part A or the Oxford written work.
I've also created a comprehensive course, Harvard State of Mind on Demand, to guide LL.M. applicants through developing all major components of the application, including personal statements, CVs, and recommendations.
If you'd like me to review your personal statement or help you get started, please read about my approach and fill out a short application form.
Hope this helps and good luck! ☺️